Colin Farrell isn't just a sentient pair of eyebrows. No, no: stick him under a million layers of prosthetics, as in The Batman spin-off The Penguin, and he'll still turn out a performance for the ages. Even as he wins plaudits and awards across the board for his starring turn in Martin McDonagh's The Banshees of Inisherin opposite Brendan Gleeson, his Penguin in The Batman can't be forgotten — an insidious menace, disconcertingly high-energy, a marked contrast against R-Bats' doom-and-gloom Cobaininess. He only had a smattering of scenes, alas. Until the Penguin spin-off hits HBO Max, that is.
Here's everything we know about The Penguin.
What is The Penguin about?
The Penguin picks up a couple of weeks following the events of Matt Reeves' Robert Pattinson-starring The Batman, which concluded with the city of Gotham knee-deep in water following a citywide bombing masterminded by The Riddler. It centres on Colin Farrell's eponymous crime proprietor — government name Oswald Cobblepot, aka The Penguin — as he seeks to consolidate his power in Gotham City's criminal underbelly.
Speaking to ExtraTV, Farrell described the very first scene of the series: “I read the first script for the first episode and it opens up with my feet splashing through the water in [mob moss] Falcone's office. Even just that alone when I read it, I thought, ‘Oh jeez!'”
Speaking to Variety at the Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards Gala in January, Farrell revealed that he didn't know his Penguin would be getting a spin-off when they first starting shooting the Pattinson-starrer.
“The only thing I had an idea was that I wasn't nearly getting to explore the character as much as I wanted to,” the 46-year-old said in a red carpet interview. “Because there was all this extraordinary work done by [makeup artists] Mike Marino and Mike Fontaine and his team, and I just thought that it was the tip of the iceberg, pardon the pun, that we were getting to do the six or seven scenes that we did in the film. I was grateful for them, but I wanted more.”
Farrell told Variety that he subsequently “had a bit of a thought about it” before speaking to producer Dylan Clark, who also liked the idea. The real driving force behind his desire to do the spin-off, however, was the transformative work of Marino and Fontaine, the makeup artists behind his vicious visage.
“Honest to god, any thought I had about an extended series was to do with Mike Marino's work,” Farrell told Variety. “I just knew there was so much to do with it — age it up, age it down. He's just such a genius, Mike, so it was his work that was the inspiration, really.” He even took a trip to Starbucks in the Penguin prosthetics during his first makeup test. “They're cool about it in Ireland. People don't be looking,” he continued. “People don't be paying as much attention as you think!”
According to an interview with Collider, the series will tie directly into The Batman — Part II, which is set to release in 2025.
Who stars in The Penguin?
Colin Farrell will be spotted somewhere under layers of makeup in the titular role. We also expect Cristin Milioti in there as Sofia Falcone, whose dad (spoilers) died in The Batman, as Mr. Penguin's main rival in the fight to control Gotham's criminal underworld. Michael Zegen is in as Alberto Falcone, brother of Sofia.
Then there's Clancy Brown as Salvatore Maroni (mamma mia, that's a lot of vaguely Italian-sounding names) another ex-mob boss navigating the power vacuum left after the Falcone patriarch's demise.
But what about the likes of Robert Pattinson? Surely R-Batz has got to show up at some point? Guess it'll depend on whether HBO could cough up A-list appearance money.
Is there a trailer for The Penguin?
Yes. Now in production, HBO Max (now called, uh, Max) released a 90-second teaser from the set.
When will The Penguin be released?
According to Farrell, the series began production in February, with that expected to take around five or six months. Anyone's guess whether we see it by the end of the year… but probably not. Whatever the case, that's a lot of hours in the makeup chair.
